[extropy-chat] Reccommendations for a mailing list

[Damien Broderick]

At 04:45 PM 2/10/2005 +0000, BM wrote:

>Giu1i0 Pri5c0 wrote:
>
>>Interesting, I am on this list since about 2000 and always found it
>>very interesting. But I have missed the golden age 1992-2000. In which
>>sense the list was better back then?
>
>I've been here since '96 or there abouts.  They were talking about the 
>golden age back then too, of course, but it was much more pleasant than it 
>is now, or perhaps I was more naive.

I think I hopped on board midway thru '96, and it was indeed still 
fascinating. By then, many grand themes had been chewed over already for 
years. Newbies can get a hint of the flavor from the sundry extrope quotes 
I recycled in THE SPIKE, which I was writing in 1996; some of those came 
from an earlier epoch--from people like John Clark, Eugen Leitl, Anders 
Sandberg--and were borrowed with their permission, naturally. The 
difference between then and now was, in large part, the difference between 
the spotty boffins of the British Interplanetary Society talking about 
gosh-wow rocketry in the 1930s and 1940s, and a bunch of post-Apollo 
enthusiasts discussing what is just part of history. In 1996, nanotech, 
massive life extension, transhumanity and singularity were still extreme 
themes that marked us as crazed Buck Rogers types (as the scornful once 
referred to space flight enthusiasts). Now they're everywhere, conscripted 
by scientists on the one hand and topics for mass media discussion (and, 
it's true, continuing derision) on the other.

Interestingly, I was just reading the February 1952 GALAXY magazine, where 
Robert Heinlein set out his analysis of the future, in particular the 
second half of the 20th century. He had a neat little diagram tracking 
change, with low conservative curves of various kinds for the 
faint-hearted, and a surging exponential curve of the singularity kind 
representing his view of real expected change. As usual, Heinlein was there 
before the rest of us.

Damien Broderick